How To Create A Website – An Easy To Follow Step-by-Step Tutorial For Beginners

Do you want to create a website for your business? or Do you need a website for your personal portfolio? and Do you want to create your website yourself without paying a huge amount to a web developer?

If your answers to above questions, is “YES“, then you are at the right place. Here I have created a step-by-step easy tutorial on “How to create a website“.

Don’t worry this tutorial is for beginners and thus I am not going to talk about coding anywhere in this tutorial. Also, this tutorial is completely FREE. This tutorial is useful for anyone who wants to create and set-up their website them self and wants to learn how to create a website.
Here’s why this FREE website set-up tutorial/guide can be useful to you.

1. Made For Beginners: Even if you don’t know anything about Website Designing & Development and “How to create a website”, Still if you follow this tutorial, you can create an ultimate website for your company or for yourself.

2. Up-to-Date: This tutorial is updated every month, so you will get the latest information and up-to-date knowledge on “How to create a website”.

3. Need Help? You can always ask me for a help, if you get stuck somewhere in between creating your website, and did I mentioned? it’s completely FREE.

There’s Only 3 Simple Steps To Create A Website

STEP 1
Choose Website Building Platform, We Recommend “WordPress”

STEP 2
Choose a “Domain Name” & “Web Hosting” For Your Website

STEP 3
Set-Up, Create and Design, Customize & Tweak Your Website

— – – STEP 1 – – —

Choose A Website Building Platform

There are many website building platforms available today but the most preferred choice for creating a new website would be the CMS (Content Management System). CMS is the ready-made software and can be used to create a feature rich website in a easiest way.

Again there are many CMS available today, each one has it’s own PROS and CONS, Here for beginners, we recommend to go with WordPress. WordPress is the most popular CMS today and powers approx 25% of all the websites in the world.

More reasons to choose WordPress …

1. Completely Free: WordPress is a completely free CMS software, You can download and use it for free from www.wordpress.org (There’s an alternate way to install WordPress, I will tell you later in this tutorial). Also, it has got thousands of free themes and plugins to customize your website.

2. User-Friendly: WordPress is very user-friendly, better we say Beginner’s Friendly, as you don’t require to have any technical knowledge to create and setup your website using WordPress. You just need to install WordPress and Themes and you are good to go.

3. Responsive: Most of the free themes on WordPress are responsive, so you can create a completely responsive and mobile-friendly website, which will look good on any devices. Responsive websites are also good for SEO (Will talk about this later).

4. Community Support: Being an open source software, WordPress has got a great community support. You can get help with anything related to WordPress (Themes, Plugins, Customization etc.) if you get stuck while creating your website.

Other Popular CMS … Yes we do have other CMS as well, the other two most popular CMS are Drupal and Joomla.

Drupal: Drupal is an advanced CMS platform, mostly suited for some large and e-commerce types of website. With Drupal, you need a bit of technical expertise to create and setup your website, and thus Drupal is not the best choice for beginners.

Joomla: Joomla is again a popular CMS platform and powers many of the top websites in the world, but like Drupal, it also requires a technical knowledge in setup and managing your website. Both Drupal and Joomla have lots of free themes and plugins to customize your website.

I recommend WordPress! for beginners to create a website. I have used it (Again did I mentioned somewhere? This website is also built using WordPress) and believe me, WordPress is flexible enough to create a very simple to more feature rich website.

Now as we have decided the platform for our website (WordPress), It’s time now to start the real action. Lets go to Step 2.

— – – STEP 2 – – —

Choose A Domain Name & Web Host

To create a website and getting your website online, you will basically need two things.1. Domain Name (Domain name is the name of your website, for example www.webrecourse.com)2. Web Hosting (It’s a space in the web server, which will connect your website to internet)

WordPress platform which we selected for our website is completely free, But Domain Name and Web Hosting will cost you somewhere 5$ -10$ (Rs. 300 – Rs. 700) per month. Also, you can create a website for FREE on WordPress sub-domain (yourcompanyname.wordpress.com). But this does not look professional and there will also be a limited option for customization (Advance Level). So here I will recommend you to go with your own custom domain.

Also having a paid web hosting for your website will give you complete control on the speed of your website and customization.

Of course you can go with any other hosting provider. I have used BlueHost in India and found their services great. (All links to Bluehost are referral links). I will suggest you to, spend some money and go with a good hosting company. With a good web host, your website will load faster and will have a less downtime.

If you already have a Domain Name and Web Hosting, You can skip this step and go to Step 3.

A Quick Guide To Choose Domain Name:

1. A Domain Name (www.domain-name.com) should reflect your company name or the purpose you are creating your website.2. Always try to go with popular domain extension (.com, .org) or country or business specific domain extension (.in, .co.in, .biz, .club).3. Choose a domain which is short, catchy and easy to write and remember.

Search your domain and if you found the domain name of your choice, Just get it.Buy a web hosting, For this I recommend Bluehost, but you can go with any other web host as per your choice, Just make sure they are reliable.

— – – STEP 3 – – —

Website Creation & Customization

Once you have purchased your domain name and web hosting (If you have not purchased yet, Purchase Domain & Hosting Now, As you will need that in this step), You are good to go ahead. If you have purchased a domain and hosting from the same company, then you might not need any setup. But if you have purchased a domain and the web hosting from a different company, you are required to change the NameServer in your Domain DNS.

Now it’s time to install WordPress.

Installing WordPress is quite easy if your web host provides “1-Click-Installation”, With BlueHost and any other good Web Hosting Company, You will find 1-Click-Installation feature to install various scripts and software.

Steps To Install WordPress: Below are the steps you need to follow in order to install WordPress (It’s almost similar with every good web hosting company).

1. Log in to your web hosting cPanel.2. Look for the “WordPress” icon (Generally it’s found at bottom in Script Installer Section).3. Click the “WordPress Icon” and you will see a setup page.4. Choose the domain and enter the details and click on “Install Now”.

In case if your web host does not provide 1-Click-Installation (dealing with a bad web host), You may need to Install WordPress Manually.

Choosing & Installing WordPress Theme

Once you have successfully installed WordPress, you’ll see WordPress default theme installed on your website (Try refreshing the browser, if you don’t see the changes yet). Your website will look like something below (Installed WordPress default Twenty Seventeen Theme).

Now you can customize your website

Just access your WordPress Login Page, “www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/” (replace “yoursite.com” with your domain name). Enter the login credentials (got at the time of installing WordPress). Once you are logged in, You will see a WordPress default dashboard.

This is what the WordPress default dashboard looks like.

Everything here is easy to understand (Don’t worry I am not leaving you here, I will be with you until the completion of your website). Ok, I will show, where you can start with.

Installing WordPress Theme

Once you’re in your website (WordPress) dashboard, Just look along the sidebar for “Appearance”, then click “Themes”, Here you’ve got access to over 2000 free WordPress themes! Just click on “Install Now” to install a theme, once installed you can activate the theme.

If you want more (Premium WordPress Themes), you can check ThemeForest, where you can find a HUGE library (Collection) of WordPress themes to pick from at varying costs.

But before you start looking for a premium theme, I would suggest you to try spending some time browsing the free themes on WordPress Library. Many of them are actually beautiful and responsive (One or the other might suit your requirement).

You can use “search box” to find themes that suit your requirement. Finding the perfect theme can take a while, but it’s worth it (Also you can easily switch between the themes, if you don’t like the one, It won’t delete the posts or pages you have created).

A Quick Suggestion Here –Go with the “responsive” theme, as website built using responsive theme will look good on every devices.

Also you can upload a theme you have purchased from other places. Once uploaded, you just need to activate that theme.

Theme Option & Customization

Most of the WordPress themes have a “Theme Option” or “Customize” Option, Where you can upload the logo of your website, Change the link color etc. (Customize option here is theme specific, You may not find the same options with every theme).

Adding Pages To Menu

1. Click “Appearance” -> “Menus” in the sidebar of the WordPress Dashboard2. Find the page you created and add it to the list by clicking the checkbox next to it and then “Add to Menu”. You need to “save the menu” also to appear the changes on your website.3. Also, you can add custom Links in the menu too.

Creating A New Page

1. Look along the sidebar in the WordPress Dashboard for “Pages” -> “Add New”.2. You’ll find a WordPress Text Editor (Options here looks familier). Add text, images and more to build the page you want, then click on “Publish” when you’re done.

Creating A New Post

1. Look along the sidebar in the WordPress Dashboard for “Posts” -> “Add New”.2. Again You’ll find a WordPress Text Editor. Add text, images and more to build the post you want, then click on “Publish” when you’re done (You can add category and tags for Posts too).

Adding Widgets to Sidebar

1. Go to “Appearance -> Widgets” in the WordPress Dashboard.2. From here, you can use drag and drop to add different “Widgets” to your sidebar or remove the items you don’t want (You can also add Widgets in the footer if your theme has an option).3. Most of the widgets are self-explanatory, Just play with it, you will understand them.

Installing Plugins To Extend WordPress Functionalities

WordPress “Plugins” are extensions that are built to extend WordPress functionalities. As WordPress themes are for the design of a website, WordPress Plugins are to add features and functions to your site that doesn’t come built-in.

WordPress plugin directory has over 25,000 different FREE plugins, You can easily get the one as per your requirement!

Install a new Plugin

1. To start installing plugins, go to “Plugins -> Add New” and simply search for a plugin.2. Once you find a plugin you want, just click “Install” and then “Activate”.3. Then you can go to the plugin specific setting page to setup that plugin

Remember: Every plugin adds weight to your website and thus it slows down your website, so use the plugins sensible. Do not overuse them!

Some Important Plugins:

Below are some of the most popular and important plugins that you may find useful for your website and blog (Just a few to start with).

#1. Contact Form 7: If you want to embed a contact form on your website then this plugin will come handy. Contact Form 7 is one of the most popular and most downloaded plugins in WordPress directory. It’s easy to set-up and you will have a working contact form on your website in just a few minutes.

#2. Yoast SEO for WordPress: WordPress itself is very SEO friendly but if you further want to improve your website for search engines, You should look no further than Yoast SEO for WordPress. It’s one the most popular and complete plugin for WordPress SEO.

#3. W3 Total Cache: Speed of a website is one of the biggest concern for a WordPress (or any CMS) based website. You use this plugin to cache the static contents of your website. Moreover it does a lot more in improving the speed of your website.

I am sure, by now you have a working website created by your own. Great! But your learning does not end here, Keep improving your website (Design Wise, SEO Wise ETC). In case if you still have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask me.

And last but not the least, If you find this tutorial useful, please share with your friends too (Use the social sharing button in the sidebar). This helps me a lot and keeps me motivated to keep all the information on this website updated.

How To Create A Website – An Easy To Follow Step-by-Step Tutorial For Beginners

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About The Author

Ghanshyam Rao

I am a Digital Marketing Professional. Over the years I have got the experience in Web Design & Development, WordPress and Blogging, Also I am the one started this website. Connect with me on Facebook or Twitter.